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Blog: Neil Kermode on ICOE 2016

We can’t quite believe a month has passed since the International Conference on Ocean Energy (ICOE). Our Managing Director Neil took some time following the conference to reflect on what was a very busy week us, and given the post-ICOE catch-up, it’s taken a little longer than usual to get this posted online:


Wow! That was a really heavy week!

Scotland had the privilege of hosting ICOE in Edinburgh for the first time, and I am delighted to report that it went off really well: the team that put the overall event together are to be congratulated.

But as ever the success of such a gathering is always more than those most memorable presentations and announcements. It is the sum of the activity done by person to person contact in and around the event. Triggered by stimulating presentations and the right atmosphere, the ‘craic’ that develops becomes infectious. Seeing new pairings of people huddled in earnest conversation around the event bodes well for the new work that will emerge from these conversations and deals.

From EMEC’s point of view ICOE was a great success. Our signing up of Tocardo to come to the tidal site may have grabbed the headlines, but we also met up with so many past, present and future customers that I cannot keep count. Whitford coatings also went public with the work they have been doing on corrosion resistant coatings at EMEC and showed the test rigs they have in Stromness.

The speed updates at lunch-time on our stand worked well with the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult launching their Technology Assessment Process, Laminaria setting out plans for their LAMWEC project and Scotrenewables kicking off their €10m FloTEC project. It also gave EMEC a chance to report on what it has been doing in the last year with its monitoring pod, Environmental Technology Verification and also preparation for its hydrogen plant. EMEC’s takeover of one of the Pelamis P2 wave energy converters from Scottish Power was also announced and we are actively seeking proposals on the best way to use it for research purposes.

EMEC was also delighted to both chair and speak several times at the conference, and my only wish is that I could have attended all the presentations. Maybe an EMEC time machine should be the next project? There are so many fugitive points that come out in the presentations that don’t feature in the slides of transcripts that it is easy to miss a crucial snippet.

However I was delighted to be in Geraldine Martin’s presentation about Normandy’s plans for marine energy as she made the most telling point of the conference for me. Not only was it great to see the scale of drive in France to make this happen, she also issued a salutary challenge to us all of the worrying trend that permeated the entire event. That all the work going on at the moment is not yet enough to get us to the CO2 point we need, nor even to the less challenging point that all governments signed up to in the Paris COP21 talks before Christmas. She showed that whilst renewables have a key part to play, they are only a piece of the jigsaw and energy conservation must become central to our lives.

I had also headlined my talk on our electrolyser work with the frightening figures of 403.61 & 399.82. The former was the measurement of CO2 levels taken in Hawaii that week. The latter was what it had been just a year ago. So we have added 3.79 parts per million of CO2 in just 365 short days. Since the consensus is that 450ppm will put our climate into a dangerous 2 degree rise in temperature and associated increases in storminess and climate change we know we are playing literally with fire, and flood, and probably famine.

At an event following ICOE, EMEC was delighted to host the 3rd International WaTERS (Wave and Tidal Energy Research Sites) workshop. This is a gathering of people from around the world who are working on their own test sites and it was a pleasure to hear how much progress is being made. It can feel really lonely out there sometimes and it was great to share our experiences of what has been going on and the challenges met and still to be faced.

On several occasions during ICOE I fell into conversation where people were amazed to hear how much EMEC is involved in. As somebody said to me: ‘you guys are really going for it aren’t you?’ and the answer is ‘Well we are trying as hard as we can, but we need to do more! We ALL need to do more.’

So while all the stands at the conference have been packed away, and delegates and friends (old and new) gone back to their homes across the globe, I just wanted to take this opportunity to say a sincere ‘Thank You’ to my team who put our activities together for the conference. It was a privilege to see such a well-oiled machine making the most of the opportunities of this unique gathering. I also wanted to thank everybody who we met with, who stopped past the stand and who attended a presentation because as a result of your investment in time with us, we now hold the possibility of change.

No-one who was there can doubt either the energy or determination to make marine energy happen. The challenge as ever is doing it quickly enough in the face of the detractors and sceptics who don’t yet get it.

ICOE has re-fired my determination that we ARE right. I just hope we get the chance to prove it in time.

Neil Kermode
EMEC Manager Director

Neil Kermode, Managing Director, EMEC (Credit: Tom O'Brien)

 

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